Blizzard’s shooter Overwatch continues to shine with strong numbers. However, LoL earned even more money.
SuperData analyzes markets and data. Now they have presented the annual report for digital gaming in 2016, covering January to November. Some of the statistics are publicly available.
10% of all revenue in premium PC came from Overwatch
Notably, Overwatch is ranked first in the competitive “premium PC market”. The shooter generated twice as much revenue as Counter-Strike Global Offensive in the “premium” game segment. Every tenth dollar spent in this segment went into Overwatch’s pockets.
SuperData estimates that Overwatch earned 585 million dollars on PC in 2016. And that’s despite the title launching only at the end of May, meaning 5 months were “lost”.
In other “premium” games on PC, only Guild Wars 2 can compete in the online games segment. They are still in the top 5 with 91 million dollars. Other games include Minecraft, Fallout 4, and CS:Go.
For those wondering where WoW is here: SuperData counts as “premium” titles anything on PC that is neither free-to-play, social, nor a subscription game. Their classifications sometimes seem a bit arbitrary.
LoL leads the F2P games – Asia continues to dominate
While “premium games” on PC earned 5.4 billion dollars, the really big money is in the free-to-play market.
League of Legends (LoL) alone earns, according to SuperData, 1.7 billion dollars, which is three times what Overwatch makes on PC. Also World of Tanks and DOTA 2 are doing well. The other spots in the free-to-play games are filled by relatively unknown Asian games like Dungeon Fighter Challenge or Crossfire in the West.
Analysts see a clear trend among MOBAs towards the “big established titles.” Mid-tier MOBAs like Heroes of the Storm, SMITE or Paragon have been struggling to establish themselves.
The F2P games are especially popular in Asia. In Asia, they spent 12.5 billion dollars on F2P games on PC in 2016. In North America and Europe combined, it’s “only” 5 billion US dollars.
SuperData believes that the free-to-play market will continue to grow moderately in the coming years. For premium games, they forecast a slight contraction.
Mobile even stronger than PC, Xbox One and PS4 play a minor role worldwide
For those thinking: That’s it? They are in for a surprise in the “mobile market.” It’s about more money than on PC. With strong titles like “Pokemon Go” and “Clash Royale”, mobile games outsell the PC market. Overall, almost 41 billion dollars were earned in 2016 – compared to nearly 36 billion US dollars on PC.
Consoles like the PS4 or Xbox One have a significantly smaller role in the global gaming market than we would think in the West.
While Virtual Reality experienced a reality check in 2016 and did not fare well, eSports is thriving. In 2016, established companies like Riot, Activision or EA invested large sums to reach “new viewer demographics” in the coming years.
The two top titles Overwatch and LoL are also in a neck-and-neck race in the gaming temples of South Korea, the PC bangs:
